Silver Bells
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: [OneShot.Light 1x2.] Duo realized early on that there’s never enough time to do everything you want, only just enough to learn from your mistakes.


**Summary**: (One-shot. Light 1x2. Fluff, some angst.) Duo realized early on that there's never enough time to do everything you want, only just enough to learn from your mistakes.  
**Warnings**: None. Not even swearing. Inspired by my Catholic uncle's tales of being an altar boy, oddly enough; fortunately for _my_ heathen ass, he's never heard of fanfiction, or figured out what I was mulling over during Mass. ("Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned—I think bishounen in compromising positions is hot…")

* * *

**Silver Bells  
_Hades' Phoenix_**

"Duo, may I ask you a question?"

Startled by Heero's soft voice, Duo blinked the lazy summer doziness away and turned his head slightly to look over. "Ignoring the fact that you just did, if it's got anything to do with cherry bombs and local water systems, I know nothing."

Heero snorted softly, as though to show his disbelief, but his eyes were serious as they regarded him. "Why haven't you gotten tired of…this?"

Brow furrowing a little, Duo rolled onto his stomach so that he would not have to squint to see Heero past the bright sunlight, folding his arms on the grass for a pillow. "Care to be a little more specific?"

There was a slight tension in the corners of Heero's mouth that betrayed his careful, methodical thought. Words had a special power, and were not to be given away without some consideration for their effect.

"I mean…this kind of leisure." He glanced down at the book that lay open on his lap, then down the rolling slope of the hill they sat on. The town was just visible as a child's toy diorama in the distance, at the end of the long, unpaved road that led away from the two boys and their hill. "There are no parties, no clubs, no neighbors to tease. I'm not calling you wild, Duo," he added when he saw the indignation start to build in the other's expression, "merely…sociable. And I'm not."

"No, you're not," Duo said slowly, "and yet you manage to get across more meaning in a few words than most people do in whole conversations. What are you getting at?"

"How are you sitting with me, here, in silence, and I haven't bored you to tears?"

Duo somehow managed to shrug while lying on his stomach with his head on his arms. "It's nice to get out and talk to people sometimes, but Heero…they're just people. Normal, boring people, and some have interesting stories, and some don't. They don't mean anything to me, really, not like the other guys and especially you do. I don't need a crowd to be entertained. Besides, you do more interesting things than anyone else."

Heero tilted his head slightly, puzzled. "Duo, I've been sitting here reading."

Smiling a bit, Duo twisted himself onto his side so he could reach out with an arm more comfortably. "Exactly. I can tell when you come across something you don't understand immediately, because it's the same look you give me a lot. Your lips tighten and there's this little crease—" he gently tapped Heero on the forehead, just between his eyebrows "—right here. Or if you disagree with something the author's written you huff a little and you get this 'how stupid could you possibly _be_' look that's actually really funny."

A little perturbed that he could be read so easily (even if was by his best-friend-turned-lover), Heero frowned before just sighing and letting the matter go.

"See?" Duo said smugly, reinstating his arm beneath his head with its counterpart. "You've got a whole conversation written on your face—which gives me a great idea. Don't go to sleep early tonight if you don't want me to dig out the black markers."

"That doesn't explain anything." He did not mean the markers.

Duo's gaze shifted to the grass between them, a vibrant green and untroubled by any wind. He said nothing for a long moment, but finally pulled himself upright to lean back on his arms and sprawl his legs out in front of him. He sat close to Heero, right on the grass he had just been contemplating, so that he could speak very softly and still be heard.

"You know, fighting in the war, I don't think any of us really expected to see the end of it," he murmured, referring to the other pilots as well. "I just always hoped that when I finally kicked it, I would drag a bunch of the bastards with me to pave my way to Hell. Saw too many people die of stupid and gross shit—choking because they ate too fast, pointed the gun the wrong way by accident, syphilis, that sorta thing, but Shinigami was going to go down in a haze of bloody glory.

"But, we did. Live. And it was a damn scary thing to wake up and realize that I had a good chance of living another fifty, sixty years, and what the hell was I supposed to do with all that time?"

He leaned to the side just enough for his shoulder to bump Heero's, and left it there as a reassuringly warm pressure. Duo was looking towards the town without really seeing, and Heero was watching him in turn with characteristically somber concentration.

xxx

The poorly made material of the robes itched, and the sleeves slid over Duo's small hands. He liked his hands, even if they were rough and the dirt permanently embedded under the nails, because they were nimble enough to steal things and skilled enough to fix the things that the Father and Sister could not.

They also let him ring the bell.

Maxwell Church was undeniably poor; in the heart of the decrepit L2's most impoverished neighborhoods, it was difficult enough to find adequate food for all the children, let alone afford luxuries like statues and candelabras and gilded vestments. There was just enough to keep its people alive, and that was all it needed.

There were two prized possessions—the worn, out-of-tune little piano in the corner by the pulpit, salvaged from God only knew where, and the small silver bell that was slightly tarnished but had a clear, sweet voice when rung. As the oldest child in the orphanage as well as being the one that had been there the longest, Duo had inadvertently fallen into the role of altar boy. Outwardly, he just treated it as another chore that had to be done to earn his keep at the church, but inwardly, he took it more seriously than he had ever taken anything else—for Father Maxwell had given him a gift that made him _worth_ something.

And as honorary altar boy, he was allowed to ring the bell.

Services were typically small, and its attendees erratic; the pews held people that came out of morbid curiosity, or desperation, or simply for the momentary relief that came with having a roof over one's head. Sometimes whores with tired paint and battered heels would sit and half-listen with sneering cynicism, and other times Duo would have to help the Father and Sister carry out the few that had passed out from the drug cocktails running through their bodies.

Mostly, though, Duo would stand at the front beside Father Maxwell, using his long and patched sleeves to muffle the tone of the bell as he turned it over and over in his little hands, feeling the smooth-worn exterior. It had three filigreed loops on its top, one atop the other two, worked to look like a silver vine had grown out and twisted itself into a trinity.

Father Maxwell rarely, if ever, preached of the Devil and his Hell, for he was one of the few truly holy men that believed salvation came not through fear of punishment but faith in God and the honest desire to better oneself. Duo did not think much of any of this; he had lived in Hell all his life, and the only God he knew was Death. But he listened out of respect and to know when to ring the precious bell.

But it was his constant handling of the bell, his fascination with its pure beauty and perfect sound, that got him to wondering what it would be like to _be_ one. Would he make a high, tinny note or a deep, resounding knell? Would he be small and filigreed like the one he held, or big and brassy and taking up a whole belltower like the ones he had seen in the woodcuts in the old, battered Bible he was learning to read from? Carefully, he threaded his bony little fingers through the metal loops on top and pretended to swing it, very slowly, like it was a huge bell that need five ropes and twenty monks to make it toll thunderously.

A certain phrase caught his attention, and Duo realized he would soon be called upon to hand out the Host wafers (little more than flour and water) and pour the drink, (which should have been wine, but in reality was just the least polluted water that could be found). He loosened his grip on the bell to put it on the altar—but could not.

A sick feeling of horror creeping over him, Duo glanced at Father Maxwell and was never so thankful of his short stature when the table was high enough to hide all but the top of his head from the sparse congregation. He tried to wiggle his fingers, but failed; so he wrapped the bell in the loose folds of the scratchy robe and _pulled_, but his fingers were well and truly stuck in the loops.

If Duo had not learned that trying to act innocent usually made someone all the more suspicious, he would have panicked. As it was, he kept himself just a step behind the priest, out of the line of sight, and furiously tugged and yanked at the bell until his fingertips turned red and swollen and even more stubborn.

"…Duo?"

Sister Helen's soft voice nearly made him yelp in surprise, he had been so focused on the stupid bell. The nun had noticed him fidgeting more violently than usual, so she crouched next to him—also behind the table—and whispered.

"Duo, what's wrong?"

He thought briefly of hiding his hands behind his back, but knew from experience that it would never work, and he never told a lie. So he held out his hand with the bell dangling limply from it like some strange metallic growth, ducking his head and fighting the urge to cry. Boys did not cry.

"Oh, Duo," she said, hiding a smile. She took the hand was that was not occupied with the limpet-like bell and discretely led him behind the pulpit, sharing a look with the Father that went unseen by either Duo or the congregation.

"Now then," she said soothingly, taking up the afflicted limb, "what happened?"

Duo thought it was a rather silly question when the result was literally in front of her face, but right then he was too ashamed to be a smart-ass. "'M sorry," he mumbled, scuffing the floor with a shoe and staring down at the tiles, "din't mean to. Bell got stucked."

"I can see that it's stuck." She managed to hide her laughter from the sulking orphan. "Your fingers have swelled a little. Why don't we go put your hand in cold water, and then, if the bell still doesn't come off, we'll borrow a bit of grease from the door hinges."

At this point in his humiliation, if she had suggested that they sacrifice kittens, he would have gone out and tracked down some strays without a second thought. "M'kay."

It was hard to find cold water on the colony, let alone ice, so they made do with a chipped bowl of tepid water just cool enough to make his fingers numb after a while. He sat on Sister Helen's lap and balanced the bowl on his knees, quietly listening as she hummed and idly remade his braid. Her hands were gentle.

Soon—too soon, in Duo's opinion—Father Maxwell found them. Grimly, Duo stood up and gave the bowl to a confused Sister, then bowed his head in front of Father Maxwell. The bell still dangled from his fingers.

"Are you all right, Duo?" he asked kindly, hands folded neatly at his waist. The boy peered up at him suspiciously.

"Ain't you gonna thump me?" he asked, his wiry, underfed body tense.

"Duo!" Sister Helen exclaimed.

Shaking his head, the priest kneeled so that he was on Duo's level, dark eyes calmly holding rebellious violet ones. "Why would I hit you?"

"Cuz I did somethin'stupid," he ground out, unconsciously pouting. Reputation was important when one lived by his wits and skill, and if he had made the _Father_ look bad, getting smacked was a hell of a lot kinder than most adults would do to a kid, and less than he deserved.

"No, Duo, you didn't," Father Maxwell smiled, laying a benevolent hand on the top of Duo's head. He flinched, but did not shake it off. "You may have made a little mistake, but no one was hurt in any way, except maybe your poor hand. I hardly think having your fingers trapped warrants getting 'thumped.'"

Duo eyed him warily. "Yer _weird_," he declared after a moment, still pouting, but with noticeably less tension. Father Maxwell just laughed and took his bell-adorned hand.

"Everyone makes mistakes. Even Sister Helen, and even me," he said with another smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. "The most you can do is learn from them and move on." Slowly, he slipped Duo's fingers from the bell's loops. They were red, with purpling rings around their widest points, and he set the bell on the floor so that he could massage the life back into the tiny calloused digits. "Life's too short to waste dwelling on the little things, Duo. That time's better spent with the ones you love."

Duo thought about this, and nodded with all the sobriety of a child his age.

A week later, a church and all its orphans were massacred.

xxx

The grass was warm because of the sun, and the tree Heero leaned against shielded them from the worst of the heat. It was a still, lazy afternoon, the kind that seemed to last forever until one suddenly realized that the sun had set hours ago and the sky was dark.

"But I figure," Duo said, when the silence had stretched on as he remembered old wounds, "that I've already lived eighteen years of my life, give or take a few. And then there's another eighteen years, and before I know it I'll be old and grey and complaining about 'kids these days', and it'll seem like no time passed at all. And I don't want to sit around in my old-person naps smelling like menthol and mothballs, and regretting having wasted all that time.

"Life hasn't exactly been boring. It's nice to sit back and take a breather once in a while. I can go out and be 'social' anytime, flyboy," Duo said, and shifted so that he settled more firmly against Heero, being careful not to displace the still open book. He thought of Solo and the other orphans he saw brutalized by plague and other horrors, and he thought of the church that he had seen wreathed with flame and painted in screams. For all that they had molded him into what he was, they were brief, evanescent stumbles; it was strange to think that he had known Solo only a little longer than he had known Heero, now.

In any case, Duo learned from his mistakes.

Heero looked down at the top of Duo's head, almond eyes inscrutable. Then he gave a soft, "Aa," and continued reading, grounded by the steady warmth pressed against him, and the rest of the afternoon was spent in companionable quiet.


End file.
